This paper describes a closed-loop robotic system which calculates its position by means of a silicon retina sensor. The system uses an artificial neural network to determine the direction in which to move the robot in order to maintain a line-following trajectory. We introduce a pure “end to end” neural system in substitution of typical algorithms executed by a standard DSP/CPU. Computation is...

We report on the passivation properties of molecularly modified, oxide-free Si(111) surfaces. The reaction of 1-alcohol with the H-passivated Si(111) surface can follow two possible paths, nucleophilic substitution (SN) and radical chain reaction (RCR), depending on adsorption conditions. Moderate heating leads to the SN reaction, whereas with UV irradiation RCR dominates, with SN as a secondar...

Synthetic multi-substituted hydroxyapatite nano powders containing silicon and or carbonate prepared by a wet chemical method. The process parameters are set up to allow the simultaneous substitution of carbonate and silicon ions in the place of phosphorus. The chemical and structural characterizations of the prepared powders are determined with the aid of; XRF, ICP, XRD and FTIR. The results s...

Formal substitution of the central carbon by silicon within the tetrahedral tetrakis(4-tetrazolylphenyl)methane linker in a copper-based MOF is shown to uniquely influence the structure of the resultant MOF, affecting the orientation of the metal-based nodes and leading to an increase in unit-cell volume and solvent accessible void space.

The heavy fermion intermetallic compound URu2Si2 exhibits a hidden-order phase below the temperature of 17.5 K, which supports both anomalous metallic behavior and unconventional superconductivity. While these individual phenomena have been investigated in detail, it remains unclear how they are related to each other and to what extent uranium f-electron valence fluctuations influence each one....

Design of novel materials for efficient solar energy conversion is critical to the development of green energy technology. In this work, we present a first-principles study on the design of nanostructures for solar energy harvesting on the basis of the density functional theory. We show that the indirect band structure of bulk silicon nitride is transferred to direct bandgap in nanowire. We fin...

We investigate charge-balanced hydrous magnesium and silicon defects [(2H)Mg, (4H)X Si] by first principles. Two new lowest-energy hydrogen configurations are proposed for (4H)Si. With these new configurations, the distribution of O-H stretching phonon frequencies in Group I (>3450 cm–1) are better reproduced. Substitution of silicon with four hydrogen atoms gives rise to significant elongation...